In the last couple of years, there has been big progress in finite temperature QCD on the lattice. Large-scale dynamical simulations of 2+1 flavor QCD with various improved staggered quark actions have been started to produce results for various thermodynamic quantities which are extrapolated to the continuum limit at around physical quark masses, and thus are capable for a direct comparison with experiment. At the same time, the theoretical uneasiness with staggered-type lattice quarks motivated several groups to accelerate studies with Wilson-type quarks and lattice chiral quarks. In this review, I discuss these important developments in finite temperature QCD made in the past year.
Download